Remember last month when we introduced you to the Memoirists Collective? Well, the contest they announced back then—in which aspiring memoir writers could submit excerpts for potential consideration by the Collective's editors—has reached its final judging stages, and on August 7th, the four memoirists will all be flying into Cleveland to announce the winner at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

Why Cleveland, I asked Collective member Danielle Trussoni (right), author of Falling Through the Earth. "Well, as everybody knows, Cleveland is the birthplace of Quaker Oats, the site of the first automatic traffic light and is the Sister City of Bangalore," she emailed back. "In addition, Cleveland is home to the Steamship William G Mather Museum and the Lakeview Cemetary grave of James Garfield (not the Memoirists Collective's favorite dead president, but that is beside the point). But what really caught our fancy is that Cleveland is home of the first coronary by-pass surgery! Now that is where you've got to have a book event!"